In strong contrast to the log structure of the walls, the traditional roof was raised in a completely different technique. They were entirely built of rafters in both rural dwellings and churches, at least as far as the oldest standing buildings indicate.
However, there were some differences between them, deriving from the ceilings they protected and the status they emphasised.
82 Ieud Şes. This church, particularly known as the wooden cathedral of Maramureş, built probably in the 1710s or in the previous decades, retains the steepest roof of all known in the region. The rafters over the sanctuary might measure two times the width of the sanctuary or more. Photo: July 1993.
House roofs
In both churches and dwellings, the log wall ended with a plate (călăreţ), similar to the sill at the basement. The plates and the sills were preferably selected from hard massive oaks, definitely squared and almost always notched by strong projecting joints, no matter how the logs and their joints were shaped in between them. They had to ensure both a large strong base for the roof above and a good stability on the ground. A lasting roof relayed on these two conditions.
The roof of a house began where the log structure ended: at the ceiling. The main beam supporting the ceiling was the "master's girder" (meştergrinda, 38 and 83: MG). This massive piece was structurally vital, since it connected together all the cross walls along the axis of the house, and prevented the joists from bending.
The master carpenter Hotico Găvrilă excellently explained why this important piece disappeared from the local traditional house:
"Once, the corn was stored up to the knees high in the garret, and there were also many chests for all sorts of grains. The lards, bacons and sausages, all hanged from the collars of the rafters to smoke safe from the cats. Now you find only empty bottles and rags. What would a master's girder be useful for, today?"115
115 Inf. Hotico 2001.
83 Crăceşti. The house of Bohotici family, dated from soon after the revolution of 1848, maintained its thatched roof into the present, now being rebuilt in the Ethnographic Museum of Maramureş. The reconstruction of the roof respects not only the present roof but also the descriptions made by the last owner, Bohotici Grigore Frigianu (2000). For a resistant thatch roof it was good to lightly wattle the laths and let the heads of the pegs fixing the laths to the rafters as long as possible outside. The hay was laid and compacted starting from the eaves moving all around the house.
The support at the eaves was made of short but thick boards (poză, a) placed with one side under the eaves purlins and the other side over the lowest lath, slightly slanting inside to hold back the pressure from the heavy thatch. On a roof like this there were necessary about 5-6 hay carts. The roof could have been strengthened along the ridge with some pairs of short poles (rude, b) tighten together over the thatch. At the two ends of the ridge there were put two vertical poles (ţăpuşti, c) to prevent the wind from blowing the hay away from the roof. Scale drawing: October 2000.
MG b
c
a
Accordingly, most of the year's growth was deposited in the garret and therefore the master’s girder supporting it was vital in the past. On the other hand, this girder also played a symbolic role inside the house. According to the native ethnographer Mihai Dăncuş, meştergrinda separated the room into a "space of life acts", the half towards the rear of the house, and a "space of ritual acts", corresponding the half with the entrance and the windows at the front of the house.
"In the space of life acts there are the bed and the sleeping places in general. Here the people are procreated, born and here they die, too. In the other space, [of ritual acts,] it is the table where the child is laid to be baptised. Also at the table the bride and the bridegroom sit under the wedding feast ... On the same table it is laid the coffin with the dead person.... On the side with the bed, in the opposite corner, it is the heating and cooking system, and on the side with the table, [towards the entrance,] it is the corner with the sideboard."116
The presence of the girder inside the house was thus used to arrange the space in two symmetrical sides, with four centres of gravity, respecting the four corners of
116 Dăncuş 1986, 133.
84 Călineşti. The large house of the noble Tivadar family, probably dating from the turn of the 18th century, is an excellent example of a log construction built with double-slot joints. The steep roof is partly unloading through the log structure partly through the posts on two sides of the narrow porch. Scale drawing:
October 2000.
the room (86).117 Not surprisingly that the master carpenter was asked to decorate it and sometimes write a message to the future generations on it.
The master's girder was fastened to its position by the plates. These plates were dimensioned to protrude out of the wall in order to support the eaves purlins (cununile). In the next step, the joists were laid in between the plates to support the flat ceiling. Although the joists followed the length of the plates, their ends only secondarily strengthened the frame of the eaves purlins. The four eaves purlins around the construction built a frame entirely suspended on the brackets extending out of the wall. This frame was well notched to become the base of the future roof.
Without exceptions, the old raftered roofs above the extant local vernacular dwellings were formed with four steep slopes, two large separated by the ridge and two small at the sides. Thus these roofs unloaded by all four sides on the frame of eaves purlins. This type of raftered roof is found in a large area of the continent, though, gravitating around the Carpathian Mountains.118
Compared with the heavy wall timbers, the rafters were easily fabricated on the ground. Their length was related to the size of the cross eaves purlins. The pairs of rafters were halved at the ends where they met and secured together by a peg to form a triangle with equal sides. The apex of the paired rafters was then strengthened by a collar with lap joints and drilled pegs. At the lower ends, the rafters were provided with a small “heel” to be fixed in the eaves purlins and a short tail extending to form the eaves. After all the rafters were prepared, their assembling begun. It is good to remark that the pairs of rafters formed trusses without tie beams. The frame of eaves purlins and the plates were entirely able to balance the side thrust and transfer the roof load to the corner joints. Finally, the raftering was strengthened by laths.
Most of the vernacular dwellings were until a century or two ago thatched (83, 85). Intentionally or not, this choice seemed salutary since the thatch on the roofs became in difficult years a critical reserve for the cattle. In 1740 the priest from Budeşti Vinţeşti noted on a church book about the year of famine that plagued the village as he was forced to uncover the barn to feed the livestock.119 This experience was repeated once again in 1914, in the preamble of the World War I, and it is still remembered.120
The shingles were by all probabilities known in Maramureş since Middle Ages. In the 17th century, in the town of Baia Mare the shingles often came from Maramureş.121 A century later, the shingle makers from Budeşti and Botiza continued to sell their products in Baia Mare and other towns further in the Tisa plain.122
In Maramureş it is possible that some country nobles covered their manor houses with shingles, as a mark of their wealth, but we are not able to distinguish it from the surviving rafterings since they were identical for both thatch and shingles.
The dwellings in the common farms were however generally thatched, because of the high costs of the iron nails for shingles. In some villages from the southern margins of Maramureş, the wooden nails made of yew tree were also known,123 and the tradition from Bushtyno remembers the local church was covered with shingles fixed by nails made of oak. Although the natives had alternatives no utilisation of
117 Stoica,Georgeta, Interiorul locuinţei ţărăneşti, 15, 1973 Bucureşti, after Dăncuş 1986, 133.
118 Stahl, Paul Henri, „Casa Ţărănească la români în secolul al XIX-lea”, AMET 1959-1961, 133-137, 1963 Cluj.
119 Bârlea 1909, 60.
120 IEF, AER, chestionarul 2, locuinţă interior, A II/17, 158, 2; inf. Bohotici 2000, Opriş 2000, Bălin Ileană 1999.
121Şainelic, Sabin, “Arhitectura bisericilor de lemn din Ţara Chioarului”, Marmaţia II, 294, n. 57, 1971 Baia Mare.
122 ÖStA-KA, K VII K, Beschreibung, 62.
123 IEF, AER, chestionarul 2, locuinţă interior, A II/19-20, 159.
85 Tereblia. In some villages from the lowlands of Northern Maramureş it is still possible to observe ruinous thatched houses as this one of Hrulia Vasilina from Tereblia, probably erected in the 19th century. In this part of Maramureş the strips of daub sealing the walls are specifically emphasised in colours like white and blue. The low opening in the roof allowed the smoke to come out. Photo: November 2002.
86 House interiors. The master’s girder delimited the warm room into two parts: the intimate one (of the life acts) and the social one (of rituals). The most protected and also most colourful was the corner with the bed (A). Although close to the door, the fireplace was also regularly placed beyond the master’s girder and thus protected (B). It is necessary to remark the low protecting log wall around the fireplace interlocked with fine flush joints and sometimes richly decorated with protective signs, as a sacred part of the house. The eating place (C) is the most lighted corner where the guests were eventually invited to sit. The corner with the entrance had the important threshold where the foreigners were allowed or not to step over. Photos from June 1999 of Iurca house (Călineşti, A and C), Marinca house (Sârbi, B) and Petrovan house (Bârsana, D), all in the Ethnographic Museum of Maramureş.
shingles in a large scale was noted for that reason. It was not until the iron became cheap that the use of shingles clearly increased. The first furnace in Maramureş, opened in Kobyletska Poliana in 1780,124 might have played a decisive role in the new trend.
124 Filipaşcu 1997, 127.
D
C A
B
86 Călineşti Căeni. Axonometric reconstruction of the initial church and its simple roof. The eaves purlins jetted on consoles (a) goes all around the log fabric to support both the large roof above the church and the smaller one protecting the sanctuary. Scale drawing: August 1994.
a
88 Breb (A) and Sârbi Susani (B). Sections through the naves. In both churches the new roofs (a) took over the function of the earlier roofs (b). In Sârbi Susani, the short lower rafters (c) extended long outside to protect the ancestors’ tables (d). Scale drawings from April-May 1995.
Church roofs
The raftered roofs over the churches had to protect the inner vaulted ceiling, which was itself a log roof.125 In Maramureş it was not customary to build a light vault suspended from the roof structure, on the contrary, a vault was built so firm above the walls that the raftering could sometimes be reinforced by leaning against its shell. This round log structure was identified with the heaven (cerime) and it was one of the most characteristic features of the rural wooden church in the entire Carpathian area. Although Maramureş was at the northern margin of this area, it was here the most robust and ample examples were built.
A vault was primarily obtained by extending the lateral wall timbers over the gables, following a semicylindrical shape. The logs of the vault were notched at the gables except for the last longitudinal ones, who were laid over the gables and fixed by pegs. This inner covering was only raised above the nave, and sometimes in a smaller scale above the sanctuary. The narthex, instead, appears to have been always ceiled flat, since the tower was mounted on it.
In what measure the vaulted ceiling was perceived as a roof and used as such, it can be at best observed in the oldest standing churches with a single roof (87-88). The parish churches from Breb, Valea Stejarului, Sârbi Susani and Călineşti Căeni were all built in the first half of the 17th century, but each of them presents a different structural relation between the vault and the raftering. Although they were altered in time, their partial reconstruction is still possible.
125 Toşa 1999, 150.
A B
a
b
b
a
c
d
In Breb (1622), the upper part of the old roof is well maintained, only the lower part being affected by a new raftering (88 A). On the top of the vault there is a small pitched roof of rafters, about 280 cm long. At the eaves, there was a second row of short rafters. They must have been fixed to the massive purlins, with a short tail extending outside, and leaned against the vault either where the upper rafters ended or a bit lower. After the laths and the covering material were laid, the entire roof formed continuous slopes on both sides of the vault. Evidently, in this roofing system it was the vault that took over most of the load and side thrust. On both sides, at the level between the upper and lower rafters, it was a risk the perfectly round vault would deform, especially in the middle. Anticipating this risk, the master carpenter prevented it by a transverse rib. He assembled this rib from four curved pieces of sweet cherry tree, notched together by scarf joints and pegs. There is a natural question regarding this solution: Why were the rafters cut off so short and unloaded on the vault? An obvious explanation would be that the load and the side trust from the upper half of the roof were best taken over by timbers inclined at the same angle, as there were on both sides of this vault. But, although the roof system appears well thought, there were other more practical solutions available and already used in other churches around. There must have been a more important reason for this choice and that could only have been a symbol, integrated in this
89 Breb. The rib strengthening the vault and the roof above displays a remarkable artistic work, whose message waits for clarifications. The motives seem to come from a Christian-mythological iconography.
The composition is dominated by the world trees growing from both sides and culminates in the middle with a Russian patriarchal cross in a crosslet variant. At the very bottom there is a St. Andrew’s cross on both sides (a and k). The world tree at the left (b) shifts from a wine stock to a fir and than to an ear. The following part reproduces a stag ready to jump or fight (d) in between two rows of 5 rosettes which may represent full moons (c and e). The left part contains also a second wine stock, in the upper part, somehow symmetrically positioned in relation to the stag in the middle.
d c
e
b
a
f
exceptional constructive solution. And the key of this symbol remained on the rib, fully explained by the carpenter itself. He decorated it with one of the most fantastic compositions of signs and symbols ever seen in the Carpathians (89). It seems to me that such "decorated letters" mainly appear in places of double significations. In this case, the strengthening rib seems to emphasise the double role of the vault: to functionally hold up the roof and symbolically identify itself with the heaven.
The second example of a unique roof was maintained in Sârbi Susani (1639), almost intact until 2000, when it was heavily altered by heartless repairs. The roof made of two rows of rafters was also used here (88 B). However, the upper rafters, about 5 m long, were not fixed to the vault but to some top purlins parallel with the vault. The top purlins rested on the projecting ends of two timbers from the gables, left on purpose for this function. The slopes of the roof were continued to the eaves by short lower rafters, about 2.25 m long. They were leaned to the vault under the top purlins and fixed by pegs to the eaves purlins. Their ends extended long from the eaves purlins to shelter some massive timbers laid along the sills. These were the ancestor's tables (mesele moşilor), and they belonged to the local families. On these tables, they carried out certain ritual feasts paying respect to the forefathers
i
j g h
k
On the right side, the world tree seems to be represented with deep roots (j) nourished by drops of rain or by a life giving spring down to a rosette representing the moon or the earth. A bird (i) watches over the tree that further grows and changes into a flower. The flower receives the blessing ray of light from the sun above (h). The sun was placed just beyond the cross (g), up on the highest part of the rib. The entire work seems to invite to a spiritual travel into higher, heavenly realms. Scale drawing and tracing: May 1995.
buried around the church. This practice goes long back in time, being attributed in 1586 to an ancient Dacian custom.126
The roof from Sârbi Susani retained many similarities with the roof from Breb. Although the upper rafters didn't unload directly on the vault, the rafters were evidently fragmented, the lower rafters were leaned to the vault and inside the nave the vault was provided with two transverse ribs. Indeed, the message from Breb is still recalled here, despite the small variations and less coherence.
An important detail here, which remains unclear in Breb, was the eastern gable. As it appeared before it was altered, the old roof over the nave was left open towards east. There was an identical example at the vanished parish church from Ruske Pole II Inf., erected in 1748.127 In Sârbi Susani, the ridge extended eastwards about 70 cm from the last rafter, protecting the vault from the rain and snow. As a consequence, the vault was symbolically or not exposed from that side to sun and the weather.
The church from Valea Stejarului (1615-20) presented a similar approach to the roof. The old rafters were replaced here by new ones for long time ago. Despite this loss, we can still observe the grooves and the holes from the former rafters in the logs of the vault. The former rafters would not have been fixed by pegs to the vault if they were not shortened. On the other hand, a rib was not necessary in this construction because the vault was too small and furthermore separated by a wall between the nave and the sanctuary.
A radical different type of roof was erected over the church from Călineşti
A radical different type of roof was erected over the church from Călineşti